Product and rate determinations with chemically activated nucleotides in the presence of various prebiotic materials, including other mono- and polynucleotides

We are investigating the reactions of ImpN's in the presence of a number of prebiotically plausible materials, such as metal ions, phosphate, amines and other nucleotides and hope to learn more about the stability/reactivity of ImpN's in a prebiotic aqueous environment. We find that, in the presence of phosphate, ImpN's form substantial amounts of diphosphate nucleotides. These diphosphate nucleotides are not very good substrates for template directed reactions, but are chemically activated and are known to revert to the phosphoimidazolides in the presence of imidazole under solid state conditions. With respect to our studies of the oligomerization reaction, the determination of the dimerization rate constant of a specific ImpN (guanosine 5'-phospho 2 methylimidazolide) both in the absence and the presence of the template leads to the conclusion that at 37 C the dimerization is not template directed, although the subsequent polymerization steps are. In other words, this specific polynucleotide synthesizing system favors the elongation of oligonucleotides as compared with the formation of dimers and trimers. This favoring of the synthesis of long as opposed to short oligonucleotides may be regarded as a rudimentary example of natural selection at the molecular level.